Your first employee in Spain: the 2026 employer duties, step by step — and where the time registry stands

The company exists, the first months went better than the business plan, and the day arrives when one person cannot do it all: a restaurant in Costa Adeje that needs a second cook, a small agency in Corralejo hiring its first designer, a British couple whose holiday-let business now needs someone on the ground. The founders who set up an SL earlier this year discover that the first employee brings more paperwork than the company did — and that most of it must be done before the person walks in.

This piece walks through the employer's duties in the order they arise, from the registration that has to exist before the first working day to the documents that only become mandatory at fifty employees. It reads the rules from their sources — the Workers' Statute, the Social Security regulations, the prevention law — and says plainly where two much-discussed reforms stand in September 2026: the 37.5-hour week and the digital time registry. It covers the legal duties; the monthly cost of a salary, contribution by contribution, is a separate exercise for your accountant.

Before day one: the employer must exist for Social Security

An employer is not a status acquired by signing a contract. Before the activity starts, the company — or the self-employed person who hires — must ask the Social Security Treasury (the TGSS) for its registration as an employer: the general regulation on registration and affiliation, Royal Decree 84/1996, calls it a "prior and indispensable requirement" (article 5.1). The registration assigns the contribution account code under which every employee will be registered, and it fixes two choices that follow the company for years: the mutua that will cover work accidents and occupational disease (article 5.2), and the collective agreement whose code is declared in the application (article 11.1). Almost every private employer in Spain is bound by a sector agreement — in the Canary Islands usually the provincial one for hospitality, retail, offices or construction — and that agreement, not the Statute, sets the real minimum salary for the job, the hours, the categories and the extra pay. Identify it before you draft a single offer.

Two more filings belong to the same week. The opening of the workplace is notified to the labour authority, before the opening or within the thirty days that follow it (Order TIN/1071/2010, article 2.1). And if your new employee has never worked in Spain, the employer requests their affiliation to the Social Security system — their lifelong number — together with the first registration (article 24 of the regulation).

Then comes the rule that produces more sanctions than any other in a first hire. The employee's alta, the registration under your account, must be filed before the work starts — up to sixty calendar days ahead (article 32.3.1.º) — and an alta filed in time takes effect from the first day of work (article 35.1). The reverse is expensive: employing someone without requesting the alta is a serious Social Security infringement fined between €3,750 and €12,000 per worker (Infringements Act, articles 22.2 and 40.1.e), and the worker counts as registered anyway for accidents, occupational disease, unemployment and health cover, with the cost on the employer (article 29.2 of the regulation). Keep the alta receipt for four years (article 35.4). One deadline moved this summer: since 1 August 2026, under Royal Decree 643/2026, the baja at the end of a contract and any change of data are filed within six calendar days instead of three.

The contract: written, indefinite by default, filed within ten days

The Workers' Statute still allows a verbal employment contract (article 8.1), but the exceptions swallow the rule. Part-time, fijo-discontinuo, training and remote-work contracts and any fixed-term contract longer than four weeks must be in writing (article 8.2), either party may demand a written contract at any time, and a contract that should have been written and was not is presumed indefinite and full-time unless the employer proves otherwise. For a first hire the practical answer is always the same: put it in writing on the official model of the public employment service and keep a signed copy.

Since the 2021 labour reform the contract is presumed indefinite (article 15.1). A fixed-term contract exists for two causes only, and the cause must be spelled out in the text: circumstances of production — an occasional, unforeseeable increase in activity, or the oscillations of a normal business, holiday cover included — for a maximum of six months, twelve if the sector agreement allows (article 15.2); or the substitution of a named employee with a right to return (article 15.3). A temporary contract used for anything else, and a temporary worker still unregistered with Social Security once a probation period would have ended, make the worker permanent (article 15.4).

The probation period must be agreed in writing within the agreement's limits; in their absence, six months for qualified technicians and two months for everyone else — three months in companies with fewer than twenty-five employees — and no more than one month in a fixed-term contract of up to six months (article 14.1). A probation clause is void if the person already did the same job for the company. During probation either side may end the relationship without notice or severance, with one exception: ending a pregnant employee's contract is void unless the reason is unrelated to the pregnancy (article 14.2).

Signing is not the end of the filing. The content of every contract, written or not, is communicated to the public employment service within ten days (article 8.3) — the Contrat@ platform — and the copia básica of every written contract goes to the employment office even when, as in a first hire, there are no workers' representatives to hand it to (article 8.4). If the employee will work from home for at least 30 % of their time over three months, a remote-work agreement is signed before the remote work starts, with the inventory of equipment, the expenses the company compensates, the schedule and the availability rules that Law 10/2021 lists (articles 1, 6 and 7). Not formalising a contract in writing when it is required is a serious infringement fined €751 to €7,500 (Infringements Act, articles 7.1 and 40.1.b).

One rule is about to change. On 8 September 2026 the Council of Ministers approved the royal decree transposing Directive (EU) 2019/1152 on transparent and predictable working conditions, four years after the EU deadline. According to the government's own summary, the essential conditions of the relationship will have to be given to the employee in writing and in an accessible form from the start; employees whose current contracts lack that information may ask for it, and the company will have thirty days to provide it; and workers gain the right to know the algorithmic systems used to decide their working conditions or the end of their contract. The decree enters into force twenty days after its publication in the Official State Gazette, which was still pending when this article was written — a contract signed this autumn should already describe pay, hours, the applicable agreement and the probation period in full.

Pay: the 2026 minimum wage, the payslip and the pay register

The minimum wage for 2026 is fixed by Royal Decree 126/2026: €1,221 a month or €40.70 a day in fourteen payments, which the decree itself turns into a floor of €17,094 a year for a full-time job (articles 1 and 3). Published on 19 February, it applies from 1 January 2026, an increase of 3.1 % on 2025. Two consequences matter for a first employer. The minimum is a floor, not a salary: the collective agreement's tables usually sit above it and, where they do not, are lifted to it (article 3). And a part-time salary is paid pro rata to the hours, never below the proportional minimum (article 1).

The salary is paid at least monthly, with a payslip on the official model or the one the agreement provides (article 29.1 of the Statute). From the first employee the company also keeps a pay register — the average salaries, complements and non-salary payments of the whole staff, broken down by sex and by group or job (article 28.2 of the Statute; Royal Decree 902/2020 says expressly that all companies keep it, whatever their size). It sounds absurd with one employee; it is nevertheless the document an inspector asks for. What the payslip does not show is the employer's own cost — the company's Social Security contributions paid monthly on top of the gross salary, and the income-tax withholding deducted and paid to the tax office on the worker's behalf. Both are arithmetic for your adviser; both must be budgeted before the offer is made.

Working time: forty hours, the daily registry and where the digital decree stands

The maximum ordinary working week is forty hours of actual work on an annual average (article 34.1 of the Statute). It is worth saying plainly, because a great deal has been written about 37.5 hours: the bill that would have reduced the legal maximum was rejected by Congress on 10 September 2025, when the amendments returning it to the government passed by 178 votes to 170, and at the date of publication no new text has been approved. The government's partners have said they will try again; until a law is printed in the Gazette, forty hours it is — and the sector agreement may, and often does, set fewer.

Around that figure sit rules applied from the first week: at least twelve hours between the end of one day and the start of the next, and no more than nine ordinary hours a day unless the agreement distributes them differently (article 34.3); a break of at least fifteen minutes when the continuous working day exceeds six hours (article 34.4); a weekly rest of a day and a half (article 37.1); fourteen public holidays a year, two of them local (article 37.2); thirty calendar days of paid holiday, never replaced by money (article 38.1); a cap of eighty overtime hours a year (article 35.2); and a work calendar drawn up every year and displayed in the workplace (article 34.6). Employees also have a right to digital disconnection outside working time, and the employer adopts an internal policy on how it is exercised (article 20 bis of the Statute; article 88 of the Data Protection Act).

Then the registry. Since 12 May 2019 every company must guarantee a daily record of working time showing the actual start and end of each employee's day, keep it for four years and have it available to the employee, their representatives and the Labour Inspectorate (article 34.9). The law prescribes no technology — paper, a spreadsheet and a clocking app are all valid today — and a part-time employee's registry is totalled monthly, with a copy handed over with the payslip (article 12.4.c). Breaching the registry rules is a serious infringement fined €751 to €7,500 (Infringements Act, articles 7.5 and 40.1.b), and without a reliable registry the employer has little with which to disprove the hours an employee claims.

What about the digital registry? The Ministry of Labour drafted a royal decree that would require an interoperable digital system with remote access for the Inspectorate. The Council of State reported unfavourably on the draft in March 2026, and in July the ministries of Labour and Economy announced that a revised text would return in September. When this article was written, nothing had been published in the Official State Gazette: the duty is the one in article 34.9, and a paper or spreadsheet registry that is daily, reliable and kept for four years complies with it. If the decree is published it will set its own transition period; until then a digital tool is prudence, not obligation.

Health and safety from the first day

The Prevention of Occupational Risks Act (Law 31/1995) attaches its duties to the first employee, not to a headcount. The employer must guarantee the safety and health of the people it employs (article 14), which in practice means four documents and one decision. The documents: a prevention plan, an initial risk assessment of each job and the planning of the measures that follow (article 16 — simplified formats are allowed for small companies with low-risk activities, article 16.2 bis); the record of the employee's information and training, given at hiring, within working hours and at the company's cost (articles 18 and 19); and the offer of periodic health surveillance through medical checks, voluntary for the employee except in the cases the law lists (article 22). All of it is kept at the disposal of the labour authority (article 23).

The decision is who organises prevention. An employer with up to ten employees — up to twenty-five with a single workplace — may assume it personally if they habitually work at the premises and have the competence the risks require (article 30.5); otherwise, and for what the employer cannot cover, the company contracts an accredited external prevention service (article 31). The fines run higher here than anywhere else in labour law: a serious prevention infringement is fined between €2,451 and €49,180 (Infringements Act, article 40.2).

The paperwork that grows with the headcount

Some obligations exist from the first employee; others switch on at fifty. From the first day, besides the pay register, every company must promote working conditions that prevent sexual harassment and harassment on the grounds of sex, including online, and must have specific procedures to prevent them and to channel complaints (Law on Equality, article 48.1; Law 10/2022, article 12.1) — in practice a short harassment protocol — together with the disconnection policy above. At fifty employees the company negotiates and registers an equality plan (Law on Equality, article 45.2), justifies in the pay register any gap of 25 % or more between the sexes (article 28.3 of the Statute) and sets up an internal whistleblowing channel (Law 2/2023, article 10.1.a); with more than fifty it also negotiates the planned measures for LGTBI equality, including a protocol against harassment (Royal Decree 1026/2024, article 2). None of this applies to a first hire, but a company that keeps clean records from employee one reaches fifty without a crisis.

Hiring a foreign worker

Most first hires on the islands are foreign nationals, and the answer depends entirely on which foreigners. A citizen of an EU or EEA country, or of Switzerland, needs no work permit; they register in the Central Register of Foreigners within three months of arriving (Royal Decree 240/2007, article 7.5), which gives them the NIE and the registration certificate your payroll needs. British nationals who were not living in Spain before 2021 are, for this purpose, third-country nationals.

For a non-EU national who is abroad, the sequence is reversed: the authorisation comes before the contract takes effect, and it is the employer who applies for it, with the contract attached (Immigration Act, article 36.4). Under the immigration regulation, Royal Decree 1155/2024, the application is filed at the immigration office of the province where the job is (article 77.1) and must pass the national employment situation test: the occupation appears in the quarterly catalogue of hard-to-fill occupations that the public employment service publishes for each region — and, for island provinces, may publish island by island — or the employer has advertised the post through the employment service for eight days and obtained a certificate that no suitable candidate was available (article 75). The contract must be signed by both parties, guarantee continuous activity for the period of the authorisation, respect the applicable agreement and make the start date conditional on the authorisation (article 74.1); the employer must be up to date with tax and Social Security and prove the means to pay the salary (articles 74.1 and 76). The office decides within three months and silence is a refusal (article 77.6); the worker then obtains the visa, enters, is registered with Social Security within three months of entry — the authorisation has no effect until that alta — and applies for the foreigner identity card within a month of it (article 77). The initial authorisation lasts up to one year, limited to the region and the occupation applied for (article 73.4). Two refusal grounds catch small employers unawares: having eliminated the same posts in the previous twelve months through unfair or void dismissals or economic redundancies, or carrying a serious immigration or labour sanction from the same period (article 78.1).

A non-EU national who already lives in Spain may or may not be allowed to work. Family members of citizens, long-term residents, holders of arraigo authorisations and reunified spouses can be hired directly; a student on a long-term study permit may in general work up to thirty hours a week alongside the course; a non-lucrative resident may not work at all. Read the card before the alta — Social Security checks it too (Immigration Act, article 36.2). Hiring a foreigner without the required authorisation is a very serious infringement fined €10,001 to €100,000 per worker, and the authority may order the closure of the premises for six months to five years (articles 54.1.d, 55.1.c and 55.6 of the Immigration Act).

The first-month checklist

1. Identify the collective agreement for the activity and the province, and read its salary tables and hours before drafting the offer.
2. Register the employer with the TGSS, obtain the contribution account code and choose the mutua.
3. Notify the opening of the workplace to the labour authority, before the opening or within thirty days.
4. Check the employee's right to work: EU registration certificate and NIE, or the work authorisation the employer requests first.
5. Request the employee's Social Security number if they never had one, and file the alta before the first day.
6. Sign a written contract — indefinite unless one of the two lawful causes exists — with a written probation clause within the legal limits.
7. Communicate the contract to the employment service within ten days and send the copia básica.
8. If the job is remote for 30 % or more of the time, sign the remote-work agreement before it starts.
9. Run the daily time registry from day one, whatever the medium, and keep it four years.
10. Commission or prepare the prevention plan, the risk assessment, the training record and the medical-check offer.
11. Open the pay register and adopt the harassment procedure and the disconnection policy.
12. Draw up and display the work calendar; plan the thirty days of holiday from the first year.

An employee starts the day you register them, not the day they arrive — and almost every sanction in a first hire comes from a filing made a week late rather than a week early.

Our employment lawyers prepare the employer's file, the contract and the internal policies in your language, and coordinate with our immigration team when the person you want to hire is not yet allowed to work — tell us about the post you need to fill.

Common questions

Can I hire someone in Spain without a written contract?

In theory the Statute allows a verbal contract, but part-time, training and remote-work contracts and any fixed-term contract longer than four weeks must be written, and a contract that should have been written is presumed indefinite and full-time. In practice the first contract is always written on the official model and communicated to the employment service within ten days; once the transposition decree approved on 8 September 2026 is published, it will have to state the essential conditions in full.

When exactly must I register my first employee with Social Security?

Before the first minute of work: the alta is filed before the start of the activity and may be filed up to sixty days ahead. An unregistered worker means a fine of €3,750 to €12,000 per worker, and the company remains liable for accidents and benefits as if the alta existed. Since 1 August 2026 the baja and any change of data are filed within six calendar days.

Is a digital time registry mandatory in 2026?

No. Every company keeps a daily registry of each employee's start and end times, retains it four years and has it available to the Inspectorate, but the law imposes no technology. The draft decree that would require a digital, remotely accessible system had not been published in the Official State Gazette when this article was written; if it is, it will set its own transition period.

What is the minimum wage in Spain in 2026?

€1,221 a month in fourteen payments, or €17,094 a year, under Royal Decree 126/2026, with effect from 1 January 2026. The collective agreement usually sets a higher minimum for each professional group, and a part-time salary is proportional to the hours.

Can I hire a worker from outside the EU for my business in Tenerife or Fuerteventura?

Yes, but the employer applies first for the residence and work authorisation, with the signed contract, at the immigration office of the province, and the job must pass the national employment situation test — the occupation is in the regional or island catalogue of hard-to-fill jobs, or the employment service certifies that nobody suitable was available. The office has three months to decide; the worker enters with a visa and is registered with Social Security within three months of arrival.

This article is general information about Spanish employment and immigration law as it stood on the date of publication, verified against the Workers' Statute, the Social Security regulations, the Prevention Act, the Infringements Act, Royal Decree 126/2026 and Royal Decree 1155/2024. It is not advice on your specific situation: the collective agreement that applies to your activity adds rules of its own, and the transposition decree approved on 8 September 2026 will change the written-information duties once it is published.